Breathe The Pressure
by crypticnotions
Summary: Carter and Reese cross a line when Reese goes undercover to save a number. Can they recover? Rating will eventually go up.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I don't own POI.

Bad news: The chapters are gonna be very, very short.

Good news: About 5 or 6 chapters are already written. I haven't decided where the final break will be. Also, Carter is alive.

Part of this story is just absolutely ridiculous. At times it will veer into absurdity. Still, I hope you will have fun and yes I'm working on the other stories posted here. Literally. I've been wanting to get this one out of my system for a moment though so I hope you'll forgive me for starting a new story without completing the others first.

* * *

She took a sip of the pale ale the bartender plopped in front of her. Her elbows rested on the counter. The sound of the television announcer reading out stats droned in the silence. Only a few people milled around the dim bar and most of them were perched near the pool table jammed against the far corner.

Finally, "So this is where you've run off to?"

He grunted. "No one asked you to come here."

"Finch did. He thought you might be in some trouble since you're not answering your phone."

"You've seen me. You can go tell him I'm fine."

She raised a brow at his tone and his comment. His voice was not yet slurred, but she knew John could handle his share of liquor. In fact, she hated to admit it, but she would be more concerned if he was stone sober. Drunk, disheveled, out of control John was understandable. It was what he did, how he coped.

"Don't think I can, John. I don't think you're fine."

He turned to her, glanced quickly at her eyes and turned away. She caught the wince flashing across his face before he lowered it again. The hazy glow of the string lights illuminated his face just enough to show his concern.

"You shouldn't be here, Carter."

She almost winced. He was back to calling her Carter. She frowned and tried to push down the flood of feelings that arose at that.

"You trying to work out your guilt by drinking yourself to death isn't going to help."

He inhaled at her sharp tone.

She gulped her beer half way, shrugged off the stool, reached into her pocket and threw a wad of crinkled dollars on the bar counter.

She spoke to his hunched back. "Things have changed between us, John, but it's not the end of the world."

He sighed, but never turned around. It might not be the end of the world, but it should have been. Sleeping with Joss during a case should have been the deal breaker, but he found that his guilt wasn't from the act, but from the fact that he enjoyed it and wished to do it over and over again.

He downed his beer. They were friends and he used her. He wished he could explain it away as necessary for the case, but he knew that in the end that was a lie. He was a bastard of the highest order.


	2. Chapter 2

**Three days ago**

"Is Ms. Morgan available?"

"We can't send her in, Finch. She doesn't have any weapons training. A Taser isn't going to cut it here." Shaw pressed the earpiece harder into her ear to eliminate the buzz of static from their tenuous connection. Her crouched position against a dumpster in an alley was giving her cramps. Sometimes this spy shit was for the birds.

"How about you, Ms. Shaw?"

"Don't think I could pull it off without getting us both killed." Finch could hear the scowl in Sameen's voice and he marveled that she worked with them at all. "You know who to call."

Finch did not want to do it. He didn't. Ever since Detective Carter's near death experience at the hands of Simmons, she'd distanced herself from the team. She kept in contact, ran emergency information, but mostly she settled for easing back into her life as a detective who cheated death once again.

He knew that Reese had allowed this, had allowed the woman he was falling in love with to pull back because he had held her in his arms when he thought she would die on the street in a pool of their mingled blood.

"Is there another option?" His voice sounded weak even to him.

"Unless Lionel has skills we don't know about, Carter is your choice. I think Reese'll get over it once he's breathing free again."

Finch closed his eyes, breathed deeply and dialed Jocelyn's number.

* * *

She wanted to kill them. She would kill them. Slowly. With something blunt that hurt a lot. She adjusted her top, if she could call it that, yanked the short shorts from her rear and tipped up to the door of the casino.

"Who is it?" A man on the other side barked out.

"Melinda. I'm here for my honey, Jeff." Joss tried not to roll her eyes. The cover Finch concocted was flimsy and ridiculous. She had an inkling that most of it was Shaw's idea. It didn't matter though. This group of scoundrels dealt in the ridiculous.

The door creaked open. A lumbering man with muscular arms and a stern face looked her over. She wanted to clock his crooked nose at the leer he gave her.

"Jeff didn't tell us his sweetheart was so fine."

She caught her grimace in time to transform it into a smirk before breezing past the man.

"Where is he?" This was the tricky part. Finch and Shaw had lost connection with John hours ago. Rarely was that a sign of good things. She would need to play it cool.

"In the back."

She headed in the direction he pointed. He grabbed her arm to still her and she jerked it from his grasp.

"Aw, love, why you gotta be like that? I'm sure Jeff wouldn't mind."

Joss glared at him. "Doesn't matter if he minds. I'm a one man kind of woman." She walked away from him, but could feel his stare on her ass. She was going to punch him in his face before this was over. Of that she was sure.

* * *

"Mr. Thomas, you sure you don't want to up the ante?" Locke Jones purred. Two curvy women in gold bikinis twirled around him. They ran their hands up his bare chest.

Jones dropped an array of colorful playing chips down on the table and leaned back into his chair.

"Pretty sure." John rested in his chair; his arms sprawled over the cushioned back as he eyed the women. His long legs took up space in the room, and made him seem powerful.

Jones made John nervous. Locke was the kind of man who ordered someone's death while licking the barbeque off his greasy fingers. John wasn't afraid of him, but he knew that taking someone down like this often led to unnecessary enemies and unnecessary enemies led to a whole lot of unnecessary deaths. It didn't matter if few of the people had the skills he or Shaw did, they could still cause an increase in deaths and that would defeat their purpose.

The brunette on the left, Lena Smith, was the target anyway. Within minutes of meeting her it became clear she was a victim and not a perpetrator, but like Joss had told him months ago, you never knew when those tables would turn. He'd seen that switch flip far too often.

"Excuse me! Excuse me!"

Think of the devil. John's heart raced. It couldn't be. Finch would never.

But as the voice neared him he knew that Finch would. He'd had to disconnect his earpiece to Finch and Shaw before Jones and his muscled cronies decided to scan him. There was no way he'd get Lena out of this building without getting her killed if he decided to be brazen.

While Reese had let Carter drift away, Finch had clung to John. The man had barely held it together while John healed this time. If they were not on a mission to save people, he was sure Finch would have given him a substantial bonus and arranged for John to retire at some island with clear water and fresh coconuts.

"Honey! Honey!"

Joss burst through the men guarding the door. John mentally asked himself how she got inside when he saw her emerge. Jesus. He made an effort not to bite his tongue. Joss was the stuff of his fantasies. Light makeup, a skimpy bikini top that glittered in the light, stretch shorts that barely covered her perfect ass and high heels that made her firm legs look like they'd wrap around his body just right. He instantly stirred in his pants.

He looked at Jones to see the man literally wiping the saliva from his lips. John's cheeks flushed in anger and a hint of arousal.

"Who is this?" Locke asked. His attention was on Joss's ass.

"Oh, hi, I'm Melinda." She reached out a hand. Jones drew the hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to it. She giggled and John looked at her in wonder. The self-confident, bust balls detective he knew had transformed into a coy woman. He knew that Joss hated this kind of shit and he imagined she was seconds away from decking Jones.

"This is my woman," John answered.

Joss turned to him and raised a brow. Her face didn't betray her, but he could read _your woman?_ in her eyes.

"Yes, Jeff is my bae. Your cousin, Harold, told me you were down here, but I didn't believe him. I told him you would never be off gambling away our rent money." John ignored her emphasis on Harold and shifted in his seat.

Part of the reason was for this thin cover and the other was that Joss was making him hard just looking the way she did. He'd done everything he could not to get sucked into his feelings of love and lust, but this one moment tore down all of his effort.

They stared at each other.

Jones clapped his hands and they turned from each other.

Locke's face pulled into a grin sly enough to rival the Grinch's. "Why don't we up the ante, Jefferson? Why don't we play for sweet Melinda here?"

* * *

A/N: Decided to go ahead and post a bit more, and nipped and tucked a little here and there to put two sections together. I thought it flowed better this way. Hope you like. And yes I know this scenario is outrageous, but heck, why not?


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